On 2005-07-08, OtisWinslow wrote:
That's easy. Because they don't have one and they're not doing
the flying and they're jealous. It's a control issue .. nothing to
do with noise.

A small minority, maybe (who then go up to stir up everyone else). Most
people aren't particularly bothered in my experience, and hardly notice
the noise - well, the noise of a typical light trainer with a fixed
pitch prop.

The trouble is we do it to ourselves half the time. I've lost count of
the number of pilots in aircraft with constant speed props who seem to
think it's a great idea to shove the prop to fine pitch on downwind
making a very annoying "rrrrRRRRRRRR" noise (and making the aircraft
MUCH noisier as it flies the rest of downwind). Absolutely no need.
These types also usually fly downwind at such speed that poor C150s are
being forced out of the circuit. The prop can wait until short final.

All it takes is a little thought to fly with consideration for our
airport neighbours (and other pilots) - most high performance planes
will slow down to trainer speed just fine if need be (I used to fly a
Bonanza quite often, and I didn't find it hard to go at C150 speed if I
needed to). Even in lower performance planes with fixed pitch props you
can easily reduce your noise footprint - just fly slower at lower RPM.
A C172 can happily fly downwind at 2150 RPM and makes much less noise
than at 2300 RPM. (At one extreme is our Auster towplane, with an O-320,
it happily flies downwind at 1500 RPM and at the same speed as the
gliders, but with a power on stall speed of 30 mph, it is sort of an
extreme :-))

The same thing goes for being neighbourly to other pilots - remember
where your prop blast is going. The worst one I had was when a warbird
came in for the airshow at Galveston whilst I was working on the C140 in
our mechanics's hangar. Now I love the sound of a big radial or a
Merlin, but NOT when it's sandblasting myself, the plane, and blowing
the removed cowling into the back of the hangar!

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"